


some kind of love

by closingdoors



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, F/M, Kinda, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tony Stark Has A Heart, i just like writing abt break ups/reconciliations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-15 03:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14782574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: She gives him a pitiful smile, and it splits his chest in two.





	some kind of love

**Author's Note:**

> this got more dialogue-heavy than i'd like. also, title taken from a song by the killers.

She leaves him quietly, though he tells others that it's mutual.  _It's nobody's fault,_ he'll tell Cap later, but the voices at the back of his mind that trip over themselves in their haste to get to him whisper,  _yes, it was._

The morning of, he wakes up from sleep three hours before her. That is to say, he wakes when the sky is still dark. He murmurs for FRIDAY to keep the lights off, glancing to his right to assure himself of the shape of Pepper. He can vaguely make out the silhouette of her under the cover. Patiently watches the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, rests his palm against her bare sternum for a moment, cherishing the smooth, unscarred skin and her fiercely beating heart. When she shifts in her sleep he lifts from the bed and leaves the bedroom.

He doesn't know where he's going. Not really. Used to be, years ago, that he would fix any problem in his mind by tinkering (even if that only fixed it for a little while). Nowadays he startles like a rabbit in headlights if he senses Pepper near his workshop; acutely aware of what any upgrades on a suit may look like to her; aware of the rabbit hole it could become to him. Of course, if a suit gets scratched, he'll patch it up, but he's not needed to in a long time. That doesn't stop him from designing in his mind, though. From putting the blueprints into a folder. He tells himself that's compromise - it's all theoretical. Still, he sets up security measures to keep anyone, even Pepper, from discovering them.

He winds up watching the sunrise from the balcony. The winter air is bitter against his skin, but their new place in New York - Pepper refuses to stay in the Avengers compound, complaining it's not a home - offers a fantastic view. It may not be the same as the Malibu ocean, but he gets the watch the way the city breathes to life. He allows himself the assurance that this place, the people in it, are safe. Vision can be here in an instant. He has a suit of armour downstairs. A band of superheroes on speed dial. 

His chest judders when he breathes. He palms the scarred flesh under his t-shirt, assuaging the panic before it begins. He's better. He can breathe. As long as he remembers the precautions he's put in place, he can breathe.

Pepper wakes around six-thirty. FRIDAY alerts him. Tony doesn't move, but watches the people leaving their homes, wondering what careers are in store for them that requires them to leave so early. Whether they leave their families at home. Whether they lost anyone when the wormhole opened above them -

Pepper joins him shortly after seven. For once, she isn't dressed in her usual business-wear; she's slipped into a pair of jogging bottoms and a vest top that look strange on her. It takes him too long to realise that the clothes are his. She rests her body along the length of his, her spine taut, and presses a kiss against the cleft of his chin.

His palm settles on the small of her back. How perfectly grounding she is. Always has been, really - long before he was Iron Man. When he was just a boy pretending to be a man, drinking too much, sleeping too little. She had been the one to strip the curtains back in the morning, show the girl to the door, give him an ice-cold stare that made him get out of bed and produce something actually worthwhile for Stark Industries. It hadn't just been professional, either. Even if, at times, he had leaned too far away from her in fear that she only put up with him because of the job. No. She has always been grounding. Pepper, the only one who had red-rimmed eyes when he got off the plane from Afghanistan, who took control of his company when he could barely control his body. 

She yawns, curls an arm around him and settles her hand on his hip. Sometimes he loses himself in thoughts of what his parents would think of her. His mother, her kind soul akin to Pepper's, would've been proud. His father... 

"You've got a meeting at eight," Pepper mumbles into the juncture of his collarbone. He feels her lips brush against the fabric of his t-shirt. "We should get ready."

"Who am I meeting?"

"Finance team. They want to renegotiate the budget for the Avengers compound."

He flinches. "Cancel it."

Her arms withdraw from him immediately. He slumps against the balcony railings. 

"Tony," she chides. 

"You're CEO, you're the boss," he concedes, but they both know he's not going anywhere.

Pepper is quiet for a long time. She's never really been one for the silent treatment. The cold shoulder, sure. He's been on the receiving end of that many times. He's been the victim of her fiery rage, too. When he glances at her, her face is like stone, too hard to read, to chip into, and he thinks this, possibly, is worse. At least when she's yelling at him, he knows what she's thinking. Even her kind eyes aren't giving anything away.

"Isn't it technically my money, anyway?" He rambles to fill in the space. "It's not like I'm embezzling." He pauses but she still says nothing. "I'll use money from my personal funds for the compound." 

Pepper sighs. She closes her eyes. 

"Tony," she says again, but this time it sounds sad on her tongue. 

He waits. He thinks too much. Stares at the freckles dotted across her nose, remembers how he discovered the sound of laughter when he smattered kisses across them.

When she opens her eyes she reveals a sheen of tears, but doesn't shed them.

"The world is safe. Why can't that be enough?"

"I've gotta keep it that way," he protests, pushing off of the railing towards her. She takes a step back and he stops. "Pepper." 

"I can't keep doing this, Tony. I can't keep pretending like I don't know you design new suits every other day, like I don't know that you watch the CCTV of that damn compound on your phone wherever you go." 

"I put a lot of money into that, I'm not gonna let them treat it like a frat house. Didn't you see what Thor did to the lawn last time?"

She gives him a pitiful smile, and it splits his chest in two. When he hangs his head, he feels her fingers scrape through his hair, until her hands cup the nape of his neck. Her forehead rests against his and she smells wonderful, like vanilla, a subtle scent he hadn't appreciated before he'd known her. Vanilla soaked through his nightmares after he trashed his suits, drenched the blood in cream, made everything warm and wonderful again until Ultron happened. 

He kisses her and her hands slip down to his shoulders. He settles his on her waist and wonders about the engagement ring he gave Happy after Afghanistan, had told him to hold onto for safekeeping, because of course Tony couldn't keep anything safe, not even a ring he intended for a woman he hadn't even kissed yet - but then Pepper is stepping out of his arms, pulling him out of nostalgia, and his arms fall to his sides.

"I have a company to run," she says, and he watches the way her shoulders straighten. Even in this attire, he watches the way the intimacy shutters behind her eyes, replaced with professionalism. "You do what you have to do."

"You deserve better," he says, and doesn't say anything else, and then she's gone, and her things are too, and he is alone.

 

 

-

 

 

_The truth is I don't wanna stop. I don't wanna lose her._

The look on Cap's face is sympathetic. He turns away to face the glass, but finds confronting his own reflection worse.

He's already lost her. That's the problem. She's not a problem he can figure out, either, because the problem is him, and he's still a work in progress.

 

 

-

 

 

There's a million questions he'd have for her right now. He very nearly calls her. He's sure she must've seen it on the news by now - Captain America and his buddies arrested; escaped custody; fled from Iron Man in an airport where his best friend became paralysed. Every time he comes close to hitting call however, he remembers that look in her eyes, the quiet resignation.  _You do what you have to do._ Because really, it's not a choice. He won't be able to breathe again if he lets Rogers get away and put more innocent civilian lives in danger. 

 

 

-

 

 

_I'm glad you're back at the compound. I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself._

The line sticks in his mind hours after he's read the letter. 

He's back at the compound - but what for? He'll have Rhodey on his feet again in no time and Vision is strangely absent for a computer nowadays. He's driven away all of the people that used to fill up all of the space he built, all in the name of fixing them.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Pepper arrives quietly. FRIDAY doesn't alert him to any security threats. He's sitting at the desk in his room, scribbling on paper, just scrawling one giant void, watching the way the paper shifts from white to black. There's a soft snick behind him, and he reaches for the prototype nano tech beside him, only to turn and find his eyes glazing over at the sight of red hair.

She pads towards him slowly. He waits patiently, stiller than he's ever been, until she'd right before him. Her thumb brushes against the bruise beneath his eye, her knuckles grazing the tiny cuts on his jaw. In the low amber light he can see there's no longer professionalism in her eyes. His feet twitch, legs aching to stand. She tilts her head to the side.

"How many more?" 

He shakes his head. "Rhodey - "

"You," she insists.

Following his instinct, he stands, and she doesn't move away, maintaining eye contact. Her fingers curl at the bottom of his t-shirt, pulling it up slowly, letting out a gentle when she spots him wince. She drops the clothing to the floor carelessly, studying his body. There's a blooming of bruises across his ribs, an ugly mottling of blue and purple, she can't cover them all with both her hands. There's a lecture on the tip of her tongue, he can tell, telling him he should wrap his ribs, keep himself safe. But she stops, maybe because she can already sense his answer,  _I don't want to._

That's half the problem, isn't it? That she understands him so well. He can't hide anything from her; he can't pretend to be the man she deserves. 

And yet she's here anyway.

Pepper has him turn, spans her hands across his back, and Tony finds himself wondering what she finds there. He's not catalogued his injuries in any way - he's already cataloguing the shade of her eyes in the light, the low fiery texture it gives her hair, the way her breath washes over the back of her neck - because he's been too busy focusing on Rhodey. That's good, though. Keeps his mind off the ache. Though, he suspects, he's always going to live with that constant ache, just like how he can still feel the phantom memory of the pallidium core in his chest. 

Pepper rests her forehead between his shoulder-blades. 

"He killed my parents," he finds himself saying.

She stiffens. "Steve?"

"Barnes," he corrects softly. She is the first person he's told, will ever tell. "There was a video. Rogers knew."

"God, Tony," she murmurs softly, and then her arms wrap around him, and it hurts because of the bruises, but her touch is the delicious kind of ache he thrives on. 

"My whole life I thought it was an accident. Random freak event took them away from me."

He doesn't know why it makes a difference anymore. His parents have been dead for decades. But then he hears his mother's weak voice.  _Howard._ Thinks - maybe they would've been here to witness him still, see how he has changed...

"I'm sorry, Tony."

"Not your fault," he says, sniffs, and sets his jaw.

She releases him then and he hears her walk away. He closes his eyes and sets himself back in the chair, resting his palms flat against the desk, wondering how it is they don't shake. They hold the weight of everything he has lost, even Pepper.

"Tony."

He spins, in the seat, lungs filling when he sees her sitting at the edge of the bed, slipping off her heels. His eyes rake her head to toe, digesting the emerald-coloured dress she has on, the blazer she's pulling off. She must've come straight from the office once she heard he was back. Unless she works from home now, wherever home is to her. He hadn't asked (FRIDAY had left the address on the hard drive he'd transferred all his pictures of Pepper to, and curiosity had almost gotten the better of him, rationalising that he should know where his CEO lives, but the thought of her making a home somewhere he wasn't had him deleting the file). There's so many new routines she must have now. They'd had their routines together. They were never bumping elbows in the bathroom, brushing their teeth at the same time, but Pepper setting her phone on silent the same time he put away his new suit plans sure felt close. 

He's silent for too long, mulling over memories. Pepper begins to reach for her discarded blazer.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have presumed - "

He rockets to his feet.

"Don't go," he says, a little too desperately, a little too quickly, but it makes her pause. "I mean - this is good, right? This is good," he repeats, and approaches her. "We're good, aren't we?"

Her face softens, and she gives him that look that makes him feel like he'll never even halfway deserve her. She is too good for him, really, but despite how many times he's told her - in or out of relationship - she seems intent on ignoring him. 

He sits beside her. There's things he should say, apologies he should offer. They get trapped in his throat. How many times is she going to accept his apologies? What will it take to drive her away, so much so she doesn't come back?

"I love you," he tells her, because it's the truth, because he wonders if she remembers, because it's the only constant thing he knows.

"I love you too," she replies.

"You shouldn't."

She shrugs. "You're not my boss anymore. You can't tell me what to do."

Her curls his hand around hers as she drops her head to rest against his shoulder.

"I won't cancel meetings anymore," he tells her.

He feels the curve of her smile against his skin.

"Yes you will," she counters amusedly.

"I'll forget about the suits."

"No you won't."

"I'll stay at home more, I won't obsess over this god damn building."

Pepper pulls herself to sit upright again, so she can meet his eyes. 

"I don't want you to do any of those things," she says, but rolls her eyes after he gives her a look. "Okay. I'd like it if you didn't keep cancelling meetings last minute, but you've always done that. Tony, I don't... I don't want you to change."

"Shouldn't I?"

She pauses. He almost hates it, sometimes, how vulnerable she makes him. No-one else has ever been able to disarm him like she has. Then again, maybe that's a good thing, reminds him that he's not completely machine. As long as she is beside him, warm and looking at him like that, he's human. 

"It should be me, right? I should be the one coming to you," he remarks. "I'm the one that drove you away."

"I'm the one that chose to leave." 

That hurts. It's a truth, but he has much preferred blaming himself, placing them on a balancing act. Because if she chose to leave once, she could choose to do so again; she has seen the real him, the man that hurts and obsesses and craves deeply to keep everyone safe, and decided to leave. She has seen the underbelly, loved him for a while, and loved him when she left. 

Her thigh presses against his.

"Not everything is your fault, you know."

"I thought everything was about me," he quips, because that's what he does, but she keeps steady eye contact with him.

"It's not  _your_ job to hold everything together," she murmurs, linking her fingers with his. He stares at their hands, wonders how her undamaged hands can bear to touch him sometimes. "But I understand why you think it is."

He doesn't say anything then, too scared to mess it up, to have the truths chasing her out of the door again. She quietly orders FRIDAY to switch the lights off and he doesn't protest. She manoeuvres him under the covers, slipping her dress off as she does so, until her bare skin presses against his gently. He tugs her closer against him, knowing she's protesting in her mind, her hands struggling to find an unbruised place on his chest to rest. She'd been like this, hesitant to touch him, after his surgery. When the familiar glow of the arc reactor had been removed, and she could finally rest her head against his chest without the cold press of metal biting into her skin. He'd almost worried that she didn't know how to fit against him without accommodating to it.

Pepper's chin grazes his sternum as she presses a kiss to his throat before she finds unbruised skin to settle against. Her hair gets tangled up in his mouth, but he only smiles into the dark of the room.

"I'm sorry about your parents," she says quietly.

He kisses the top of her head. 

"Thank you for coming back," he replies, quieter.

The ache is very far away.


End file.
